In Recent years the Greater Newark & Elizabeth Metros have seen a surge in Urban revitalization and redevelopment projects big and small. Every Week there is a New Project that is announced or begins construction. Projects range from fixing up old historic buildings for residential use to opening a new restaurant on an abandoned lot to high rises and mixed use TOD next to train stations. This thread will cover it all ,Redevelopment , New Restaurant openings , Historic building Renewals , Park Expansions and Investments , New Transit Projects and certain events.
Greater Newark Includes : Bloomfield , Belleville , East Newark , Kearny , East Orange , Orange , West Orange , South Orange , Montclair , & IrvingtonGreater Elizabeth Includes: Hillside , Union , Cranford , Linden , Rahway , Roselle , & Westfield

Plans for the first phase of the Richard Meier-designed Teachers Village in Newark have been closing in on completion, but it appears that something slightly larger is on the horizon, in the form of SoMA Newark. RBH Group, which is the firm behind the Meier project, has posted new renderings of their greater plan, and — assuming the scheme is actually built — the collective change will result in the complete rebirth of the city.
Teachers Village residential district

The SoMA scheme would boost Newark’s vertical profile significantly, and looks to include at least one potential ‘supertall’ standing over 1,000 feet. Altogether, the plan would add three major office towers, in addition to several slender residential skyscrapers. Collectively, the high-rises could even push Downtown Newark’s height past Jersey City and Downtown Brooklyn — though the apparent goal of a 2025 completion date leaves room for alterations before all aspects are constructed.

Newark reestablishing itself as heart of legal industry in N.J.
Howard Kailes heads the corporate practice group at McCarter & English. - (PHOTO BY AARON HOUSTON)
Law firms are on the rise again in Newark. It's a story not unlike that of its tallest skyscraper.

The National Newark Building once stood as something like a great lighthouse in how wayward attorneys were guided to it. In the late 1940s, according to the late Newark historian Nat Bodian, 80 percent of the 35-story 744 Broad St. building consisted of law firms.

Its status deteriorated with the crime-related decline of Newark in the 1990s. The law firms (and nearly everyone else) disembarked by the time it was purchased for $7.5 million in 1998, when the owner was reporting 80 percent vacancy.

I think Halsey Street in 10 years will rival Downtown Jersey City's restaurant Row...and its not just Halsey , Commerce , Market and Raymond are seeing a lot of new restaurants , cafes , and bars open up. Ferry Street already has a popular restaurant row.

More than half a dozen projects have secured financing, broken ground or have been completed in the former industrial hub in the past year, according to the Wall Street Journal. Newark has about 280,000 residents.

One of the projects is RBH Group’s Four Corners Millennium Project, which is slated to include 705 residential units, a hotel as well as retail and office space, the newspaper reported. Dranoff Properties is planning a 22-story building with 245 units. Dranoff is expected to break ground this winter. More than 470 residential units received permits in Newark this year through October, which is more than double than the average over the last few years.

It looks like things are really accelerating in Newark and a critical mass/tipping point has been reached. The prices in Hoboken and Jersey City must be helping too.

__________________We are seeking to follow the type of architecture which is good in the sense that it does not of necessity follow the whims of the moment but seeks an artistry that ought to be good, as far as we can tell, for all time to come. -FDR